


For the Wicked

by Macadamanaity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mutant Road Trip, Telepathy, fails the bechdel test spectacularly, h/c, headache, here I wrote some cliche for you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:06:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macadamanaity/pseuds/Macadamanaity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perhaps this is what trust looked like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They had been driving for almost a full day straight, stopping only for gas and food - less often than they probably should have. Once already, they had reached a point somewhere in Iowa, where the only thing propelling the nondescript government-issue car forward was Erik’s power. The extra energy he had spent left him ravenous during a stretch without so much as a roadside stand to purchase a snack for hours. 

This, combined with the cloudless view of the sun and Charles’ constant enthusiastic prattle, had given Erik quite the start on a fierce headache.

They had just crossed the border into Colorado, with Charles at the wheel humming idly to a tune on the radio, when it became just a shade too much for him to ignore. He closed his eyes, to ward off the brightness for just a few moments. He felt a few degrees of relief. 

Such was his uncharacteristic self-absorption that he did not notice the music was no longer poorly accompanied in the seat behind him.

“Are you quite well, my friend?” 

Erik couldn’t see Charles’ gaze on him, but he _could_ sense the the wobble in their car’s trajectory.

“Eyes on the road, Charles,” he admonished wearily, his remaining stubbornly shut. It was against his nature to show such weakness, susceptibility to pain. Perhaps this is what trust looked like. 

Charles was silent a moment, and then apparently divined Erik’s affliction with his ability.

“You should have said something.” Erik could hear a frown in those words, especially after the click of the radio knob being shut off.

“Why? There’s nothing you can do about it. If I recall correctly we used the last of the aspirin on you this morning,” he referred obliquely to Charles’ baffling tendency to overindulge most evenings, despite colossal hangovers the following morning. 

Erik suspected the other man used his playboy persona at bars to cover a need to self-medicate himself to sleep most nights, but as long as these less efficient habits didn’t impact his focus during their search, Erik wouldn’t say a word.

“Nothing I can do about it? Don’t be silly Erik, of course there is.”

Erik felt the car slow and pull to the right until they were stopped at the side of the highway. He opened his eyes slowly, shading them with his hand. He saw mostly red-tinted earth, and some rock formations in the distance. No cars coming in either direction. Though one hill ahead of them obscured the horizon, he couldn’t sense very much metal nearby. 

Charles was watching him intently. It was probably just the contrast with the background, but his eyes seemed a brighter, more unnatural blue than usual.

“Unless you’ve developed a heretofore unnoticed healing mutation in the last week, I don’t see how that’s possible,” Erik responded.

Charles laughed lightly, and Erik could almost feel the sympathy creeping past him, oppressive as the warm air in the car.

“I can’t cure the conditions that caused your head to start hurting unless they’re psychosomatic, that’s true enough. But I can easily block the pain and probably help some of your tension that’s allowing it to flourish. With your permission, of course.” His right hand shifted, but remained on the gear shift.

Erik should have shut down that line of discussion immediately, but his curiosity got the better of him.

“But you can’t stop your own headaches,” he pointed out, mildly.

Charles looked rueful.

“Sadly, no. It’s not that I can stop your pain - it’s that I can tell your mind to not notice it, set it aside. If the pain were so severe as to cause secondary symptoms you’d still feel them, for example. But I can’t fool my own mind in the same way. I suppose it would be possible that another telepath could do so for me, but even then, I’m much more aware of my own, well, what I suppose you might call ‘unconscious mind’ - which is a horrible misnomer, but never mind that - than the average person. I’m not sure I could ever be that unaware of something that’s going on in my own mind...” He trailed off with a grimace as another wave blossomed behind Erik’s eyes, and then renewed his offer with a plea, 

“Please let me help. I do so hate people to suffer if there’s something I can do about it.” 

Erik’s mouth twisted with disapproval.

“It’s hardly suffering. More like a mild inconvenience.”

Charles threw up his hands with exasperation.

“Fine, fine, but there’s still no reason to be _inconvenienced_ when a simple solution is offered. It’s perfectly safe - I used to do it for Raven, when we were younger.”

Though he didn’t mention what happened when they had grown older, Charles still reached out towards Erik’s face. Slowly, as if coaxing a skittish animal.

“May I?” he asked, once again.

Erik didn’t say yes right away. He weighed the benefits (lack of pain, better focus, possible improved understanding of how Charles’ invisible power worked) against the downsides (loss of control, admitting weakness, vulnerability). He was pretty sure Charles wasn’t listening in, or he would have noticed - and pointed out - Erik’s situation much sooner. But once Erik acquiesced, there was no telling what he’d pick up.

Then he abruptly schooled himself for being lulled into a false sense of security. If there were something Charles truly wanted to pull out of Erik’s brain, there was nothing to be done to stop him. Giving permission now changed nothing about that.

“You may,” he answered at last, grim but decided.

Charles completed his reach, and placed three fingers, widely across the side of Erik’s face. One at his temple, one under his cheekbone, and the last along his jaw. He caught Erik’s stare with his too-blue eyes and for just a moment, Erik had the uncomfortable sensation that he could not look away. He closed his eyes again, but Charles was still there, so close.

 _Calm yourself, Erik,_ Charles told him inescapably. He couldn’t. Despite his verbal assent, it seemed that something in him wanted nothing more than to shrink away from Charles’ mental presence, in on itself. His temple throbbed harder than ever under his companion’s fingers.

“You’re pulling away,” Charles observed aloud in a perturbed tone. The fingers of his outstretched thoughts had stopped their creeping. Erik could almost perceive how still Charles was keeping himself, as if Erik wouldn’t notice he was there if only he didn’t move.

 _I can't help it_ , he offered silently, not without a little pride. Charles huffed. They were sitting close enough that Erik could feel his breath.

“I was trying to go slowly, because I knew you were curious about the process. But I can see you’re finding it too disconcerting. I think it would be easiest for both of us if instead I just do this.”

As he said ‘this’ Erik had a split second of feeling inexplicably like someone was sitting on his hands and then his headache turned off like someone had flipped a switch.

“Oh,” he said stupidly. Charles removed his hand from Erik’s face, smiling gently, and placed it amiably on the other man’s arm.

“Better?”

Erik rolled his shoulders, and neck, considering. He was still tired, and more than a little hungry, but could no longer feel his heart beating in his teeth.

“Better. Thank you,” he offered, though he rather thought Charles knew the answer.

“My pleasure.”

Erik twitched his power, and the car leapt to life again. Charles’ smile turned wry, but he took the hint, and shifted the car back into motion once again.


	2. Chapter 2

They pulled into the hotel parking lot in Denver just after the sun went down. There was a small restaurant just next door, and though it was usually Charles insisting that they put their comfort first over the mission, Erik, ravenous and ever-practical, made a beeline for it even before they checked in. Charles followed, a little bemused. 

The restaurant was only half-full, and the host sat them in a section far from the other patrons.

“Your doing?” Erik asked with amusement. 

Charles pointedly ignored him in favor of exclaiming over the sorry state of American cuisine and the menu. 

Given their relative privacy, after they had ordered, they discussed their strategy for approaching the next mutant - a young man Charles believed to have some ability related to camouflage (“His mind kept almost disappearing from view, though it never really moved. It’s quite remarkable!”). 

As his companion walked through the potential scenarios, Erik noted to himself that Charles had requested only water to drink, a drastic departure from the norm.

Charles blushed.

Ah, not so much a thought to himself then.

“Sorry. I, uh. Well, that is... I’m not listening in,” Charles stuttered apologetically. “Not really. But I suppose I’m still blocking your headache and when you have a thought that strong thought about me, it crosses paths with that connection and well... I hear it.”

Erik tried to feel internally for some trace of that link, but came up with nothing. He raised an eyebrow, well-aware that in the wake of Charles’ guilt over inadvertently invading his privacy, Charles tended to overshare, almost as if to compensate.

“And you’re right on one level, you know. I do generally overindulge as a form of self-medication - yes, sorry, I heard you think that earlier too, I was _worried_ -” Charles waved away Erik’s growing indignation. “But it’s not so that I can sleep. It’s so I can keep my... mental hands to myself, as it were, while I sleep.”

Despite his annoyance, Erik found himself asking,

"How do you mean?"

Charles looked thoughtful, but before he could answer their food arrived. Erik dug into his, yes, Charles, disappointing meat-and-potatoes. 

As he ate, Charles tried to answer.

“It’s hard for me to say, being the only telepath I know - our friend from the boat notwithstanding - but I think people like me are meant to be connected to other people. Mentally. Not just receiving broadly or being able to peer into people’s minds at whatever time, but actually having a part of my mind ah, _linked_ to someone else’s.”

Charles looked like words were failing him for a moment, but then continued, quietly.

“When I sleep or am very relaxed, I often find myself forging those connections unconsciously, and obviously without the permission of those around me. It happens more when I’m around people I’m genuinely close with. But of course, that’s not something I can just allow to happen since it’s not fair to those people. I’ve discovered, however, that if I’m turned inward towards myself, because I’m intoxicated or something overwhelming like that, it’s easier to resist it and keep my thoughts to myself.”

At this explanation Erik felt alarm so strongly that Charles winced.

“Sorry,” they both offered simultaneously and then awkwardly poked at their plates in silence.

After a few more moments in which neither of them knew what to say, Erik began to feel his headache creep back behind his eyes and looked up at Charles sharply.

Charles was visibly uncomfortable and wouldn’t meet Erik’s stare. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized yet again. “I’m trying to make sure I respond to what you _say_ and not what you’re thinking, even when they don’t match up but when you feel something that strongly... I’m going to take a hint and back out.” As he said this, Erik’s headache intensified.

Erik put his knife and fork down.

“I’m not angry at you, or anything you’ve done,” he told the other man briskly. It wasn’t like him to mollify another’s hurt feelings, but there was something he had to make sure was absolutely clear to Charles. 

“I was upset that you think you have to effectively incapacitate yourself to spare, I don’t know, the privacy or such, of people you don’t even know. You shouldn’t have to limit yourself, Charles. None of us should. We are who we are, and social norms are just going to have to change around us.” 

Charles blinked at him, his own food forgotten.

“Now, will you fix this,” he pointed to his head. “Before I lose my appetite?”

The pain flickered away. Charles hadn’t so much as lifted a finger, confirming for Erik what he had long thought - that the gestures and fanfare were part of Charles’ performance to make them more comfortable, feel more in control in the wake of Charles’ overwhelming advantage.

“It’s not.”

Erik tilted his head in askance.

“It’s not a performance,” Charles explained, picking up his utensils again. “It really does help me focus. So does touching skin to skin. But for something so small, or a mind with which I’m familiar - no, it’s not necessary. You’re very confusing, you know.” These abrupt changes in subjects mid-lecture were typical of Charles, when he got on a roll, and Erik had learned it was better to shift with them.

“I’m really not.”

Erik had one purpose in this world and that was revenge. The rest was window dressing.

And there was Charles’ pity again, this time laced with a dose of good humour.

“Whatever you say, my friend,” Charles offered, before he let the subject drop and they returned to discussing mutants who weren’t them.


	3. Chapter 3

It was much later that evening, after they had turned into their cramped but not entirely seedy hotel room, when Charles picked that thread back up, reclining on top of the still-made bed closest to the window.

“It is contradictory, wouldn’t you agree, that you encourage me to be so liberal with the use of my ability, when it scares you so fundamentally? No, don’t deny it - I know it’s true, and I understand.” 

Erik _had_ been about to protest but it was about as useful as lying to himself and more difficult besides. Instead he walked away from his suitcase, where he had been checking and cleaning his weapons, and sat on the side of the other bed, facing Charles, with his back to the door.

“It’s not contradictory at all, Charles. Why should I have the right to demand you be caged in, or limited, just because I fear you?” He didn’t turn his forearm upward, but Charles’ eyes drifted to it inexorably, a pensive look on his face.

Erik reached out with his power and called his pistol to him. Charles flinched as the gun rocketed towards them. Erik caught it without looking, and then continued his previous administrations with a smile.

“Or you, me.”

That startled a laugh out of Charles.

“Indeed. You are quite remarkable, my friend. But some things are not so easy in practice as they are in theory.”

“Like what?” he asked sardonically. It was so like Charles to get to his true point in such a winding, meandering manner, approaching from oblique angles. Erik far preferred the direct and the concrete. “In what way would you ask me to challenge that fear?”

Charles looked at him, this time in such a way that there was no doubt in Erik’s mind that he was looking deeper. He looked back, willing away his nervousness.

“Your headache is gone. It faded about half an hour ago.”

Erik understood all at once where this was going.

“But you’re still up here, aren’t you, Charles?” he pointed vaguely to his head, hair damp from the shower he customarily took before bed.

Charles nodded.

“And if you stay there, overnight, it will help you keep from wandering somewhere else you don’t want to be while you’re asleep,” he continued. “With less of a hangover in the morning, I suspect.”

“Yes,” Charles simply acknowledged. 

“Yes.”

“What?”

“If you ask me, I’ll say yes.” He hoped he didn’t have to spell it out any further.

“Erik, I-” Erik cut him off before yet another apology could escape Charles’ lips.

“Is there anything further you need to do, or is this good enough?” He gestured again, a little frustrated with himself that he didn’t have the vocabulary necessary to be precise.

Charles bit his lip. Erik rolled his eyes and put the gun down on the nightstand.

“Fine, just do it.” He moved over to sit on Charles’ bed and faced the other man, daring him to back down. “If it helps you be sharper when we’re looking for other mutants - when we’re hunting Shaw, it’s a favor to me. I’ll do anything for that. Helping you is the least of it.”

“That’s not-” Charles started, and then seemed to think better of it. He sat up, and folded his legs under him. “This won’t be like earlier today. I won’t force this on you, so if you panic and pull away, that’s it. It’s always your choice - but that choice has to be in harmony with your emotions. I won’t let you force yourself into discomfort either.”

“You could...” Erik pointed out lightly.

“But I won’t.” Charles reached out, with the same gesture as earlier in the car. Erik tilted his face to Charles’ hand, his fingers warm. 

Once again, he met Charles’ otherworldly gaze and couldn’t look away. Instead of closing his eyes this time, he decided to talk through his apprehension.

“Why is it like that, when you make contact? Your eyes.”

Charles smiled.

_It’s not me. It’s you - your mind is trying to interpret something it doesn’t understand with familiar symbolism. You can’t see what it is I am doing, but you perceive something, and attribute it to a source you may believe can show what’s going on in someone’s mind. Eyes are fairly typical, though some people may see it as a halo of light around my head instead. Others don’t see anything out of the ordinary at all._

“Ever the professor,” replied Erik, falling comfortably back into their normal habit of teasing.

Already Charles’ eyes looked more normal, if amused.

_Close your eyes, Erik. You’ll find it easier to perceive what’s going on without the visual stimuli._

Erik did. Already he could feel the foreign creeping of Charles’ mind somewhere within him. He tried to focus on his breathing, to keep from resisting. He could do this.

_That’s good!_

“You sound like you’re speaking German.”

_Do I? I’m not surprised. If you’re hearing this as sound, it means you’re processing these thoughts through language. And since you think in German more often than not, of course you’d hear me that way._

“Do you hear thought through language?”

_Hmm, sometimes. When people subvocalize their thoughts to themselves, when they’re remembering a speech or a quote - yes. The rest of the time I perceive the thought behind the language, if there is any. And pure thought is nothing like any of the other senses; or perhaps it’s like all of them._

“You prefer it.”

 _Yes._ Charles’ mind seemed to sigh. _I know I’m the one usually protesting that we mutants are not superior at all, that we’re all the same. But the level of miscommunication possible when people’s minds aren’t able to connect seems practically criminal to me. Are you ready to move forward?_

“Yes, I think so.”

_Splendid, onwards!_

Erik suddenly felt a rush of pleasure so intense he gasped. It wasn’t quite sexual - he didn’t feel aroused. But. Good. It made him want to lie out, as if it were a slow and sunny day at the beach. As if he hadn’t a care in the world and a pile of his favourite things. 

It was terrifying. He grabbed Charles’ forearm with his hand but he didn’t pull away just yet.

Still, he didn’t think he could say this out loud.

_What was that!?_

_Calm, please. What was what?_

Erik could feel Charles’ concern but it came twinned with more of that same feeling that left him almost aching and glad of it. He tried to mentally point to that feeling, to direct Charles’ attention there.

 _Oh, Erik._ If he had thought Charles could be condescending face to face, it was nothing compared to mind to mind.

_Can you trust me for now when I say it’s just a harmless, inadvertent side-effect of our minds being in closer contact than usual?_

Not so privately Erik was cursing, still unable to stop that part of himself that was basking, just a little.

 _Will it take much longer?_ he finally asked.

_I think you’ll find it hasn’t been very long at all. Things always seem to move at a slower rate like this._

Erik knew a distraction when he saw one and didn’t intend to let Charles get away with it.

_Charles._

_...No, I think not. Once more unto the breach?_ Charles’ thoughts suddenly took on an entirely different, _English_ tone. He tried to match it.

_Lay on, MacDuff._

_More Shakespeare! Lovely, that will make an ideal anchor._

_Anchor?_

As soon as he issued that query, barely allowing the thought to fully form, he could feel how pleased Charles was to explain. And this time he didn’t hear words, but instead some other sense directed his attention to an explanation that he now held in his mind. It seemed to say that the link that was being formed wasn’t so much a chain connected between two people, as he’d apparently been envisioning it, but more of a shared series of thoughts along a common path.

He wondered whether the path was in him and then knew that it was parallel in each of their minds. 

Just as he was marveling that it didn’t feel half so invasive or intense as before, he was aware that Charles had finished and had a self-satisfied note of content to his thoughts. Erik was going to ask him if he’d had quite enough, in a second, in just a minute.

And then he woke up, falling half off Charles’ bed, profoundly disoriented, sitting bolt upright, power grasping for the closest metal - his gun.


	4. Chapter 4

He had only half a second of panic before remembrance came flooding back. He looked to his right, where Charles appeared to be blinking awake, albeit more slowly and with no appearance of urgency. Only confusion, and - yes, there it was - concern. 

_What’s wrong?_   he asked, still silent. Erik stood and backed away from the beds as if that would make a difference. He glanced at the curtained windows - it was light out. 

“What did you do to me?” 

Charles’ brow furrowed.

“Do to you? I created the link like we discussed. It worked perfectly - I slept better that I have in ages! Erik, what’s the matter?”

He sounded genuinely upset and the echo of that worry in Erik’s mind was enough to knock his growing sense of panic and anger askew. 

“I’m missing time - I think I passed out. What happened?” His response came out less accusatory and more pleading than Erik had intended, as he eased his mental grip on the gun.

“I... let me see,” Charles murmured while raising his hand to his temple. 

Erik winced, involuntarily. 

Charles paused. And lowered his hand again. 

“Or, just tell me. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Erik opened his mouth to explain,

“You- it was. After Shakespeare there was- I was going to... _Scheisse_ ,” Erik had little experience of words failing him so entirely, in any language. 

Charles nodded anyway, as if this made any sense at all. He gestured back to the bed, patting the rumpled, floral duvet, indicating that Erik should come back and sit down. He was still semi-reclined and on top of the covers.

Erik felt a flash of something like a desire to join him as indicated, sit closely side-by-side and allow Charles to ease his anxiety. It was once again so out of character and unusual, he stubbornly remained standing, glaring.

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?” Charles appeared baffled.

“Stop making me want... that.”

Naked surprise, chased swiftly by sadness.

“Erik. I’m not. I wouldn’t make you do anything, you know that.”

“Then maybe something is leaking through that link of yours.”

“Ours.”

“What?”

“It’s as much yours as mine. And, no. That’s not how that works - It’s not a pipe through which my thoughts travel, from which they can escape like a sieve. It’s more like an agreement. A closeness.”

More telepathic nonsense.

“What does that even _mean_?”

Charles looked uncomfortable.

“It means anything you’re feeling right now is coming from you. It _is_ you. Though...” he trailed off, pensive.

“Though?” Erik was going to throw something at him, he was certain.

“If there’s an emotion you’re feeling that seems unusually strong to you, that could be overlap between us. Something we’re both feeling similarly, that’s getting amplified.” Charles shifted to sit at the end of the bed, his feet on the floor. 

“How is that possible?” Erik rather doubted there was anything _he_ felt of which Charles was capable. He had not that depth of hate, for sure.

Charles appeared to perceive his meaning instantly, and rather than explaining more mechanics of his telepathy, he renewed that stare of pity, raising Erik’s hackles even further. 

Erik glanced at the door, contemplating walking out, getting space, getting _away_. He wasn’t entirely sure what stayed his feet, though he didn’t truly believe it was Charles anymore.

“It’s not my ability you fear at all now, is it Erik?”

It took everything Erik had to meet the other man’s gaze and respond, deflecting,

“Last night. That side-effect you told me not to worry about. What was it really?”

Charles looked considering, with his hand steepled under his chin.

“Do you really find it so terrible that you enjoyed being close to someone else? That it helped you relax so much you slept through the night without even a nightmare for the first time in who knows how long?” Charles soft voice reached him like a thunderclap.

“I-” Erik wasn’t sure what to say. 

Charles stood, and took a few steps towards Erik, maintaining eye contact, moving slowly. He kept talking.

“And no wonder. But what I find amazing about you, Erik,” Charles paused, suddenly beside him, and placed a hand gently on his shoulder. “Is that you’ll accept my help, however begrudgingly, in easing a physical pain but not any other kind - even though you so freely and unselfconsciously offered me that aid in the first place.”

“It’s not the same.” Erik couldn’t bring himself to push Charles away, caught off-guard once again by his companion’s openness and proximity. Charles pressed that advantage and guided them both back over to the bed to sit shoulder to shoulder.

“It could be. You think you’re able to function better repressing any desire for that kind of intimacy and comfort but,” he smiled sadly. “Look at how vulnerable that’s made you.” He punctuated his remark by making slow circles on his friend’s back, probably meant to be soothing. 

Erik nearly arched into it, despite every nerve in his body screaming to deny Charles’ assessment, and flee. Perhaps it was a testament to how touch-starved he really was.

Still.

“Don’t tell me what I think.”

Charles sighed, stopped the motion of his hand and lay back on the bed, his hands under his head.

“What is it you really want, Erik?”

Easy. 

He twisted around to look at Charles.

“To kill Shaw.”

“And?”

“Safety for mutants.”

“And for yourself?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“And me?”

“Of course. You’re a mutant too.”

“No. I mean, do you want me? You haven’t asked me to close the link, I’ve noticed, despite everything.”

“ _What?!_ ”

Charles rolled his eyes.

“However you would define it - my friendship, my help,” he raised an eyebrow and tilted his head in a way that caused Erik to instantly recall all the nights he had seen Charles flirt with surprising success with women at bars wherever they stopped. “Anything else?”

“Charles,” Erik warned.

“Erik,” Charles matched his tone. “I perhaps saw more of you than you’d like last night. And though you may not realize it consciously, you perceived quite a lot of me too. It’s clear we are both better for it - true partners. I’ll accept that gladly, but it will do no good if you don’t recognize that part of you that needs other people for their own sake, not just your vendetta.”

Erik glared, more out of habit than genuine anger, but didn’t answer. He turned away, stood, and this time did walk out the door, telling himself he wasn’t fleeing. Just seeking some much-needed solitude alone with his own thoughts.


End file.
